Seattle, WA-Since the launch of the Washington State Emergency Contraception Pharmacist Pilot Project in late February of this year, women of Washington State have responded overwhelmingly to the new service, drawing national and international attention to the Project.

PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) initiated the Project
with four other collaborating institutions in an effort to make emergency
contraceptive pills (ECPs) more readily available to the women of Washington
State. Collaborative drug therapy agreements between a pharmacist and
prescribing clinician enable the pharmacist to prescribe ECPs directly to
women in need. Thus women are able to go straight to the pharmacy without
having to first arrange a visit to a doctor or clinic. Since ECPs must be
taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, easy access is critical to
successful use. Washington is the first and only state in which pharmacists
are dispensing ECPs directly to women. To date, more than 500 pharmacists
have completed the training required by the Project to provide this
service.

There are currently more than 100 pharmacies participating in the Project
around the state, with more being added every day. These pharmacies wrote
and filled more than 2,700 prescriptions for ECPs in the first 4 months of
service. This represents a significant increase in the number of
prescriptions being filled. Prior to the Project's launch, one major
pharmacy chain reported filling an average of one prescription for
ECPs per week. Since the Project's launch, that number has increased to an
average of 61 per week.

One of the Project's collaborators, the University of Washington, is
surveying women who had ECPs prescribed by a pharmacist to evaluate their
satisfaction with this service. In surveys collected and analyzed from the
first two months of the Project, women rated their interaction with the
pharmacist very highly. In addition, 50 percent reported that they obtained
ECPs on a weekend or after 6 p.m. on a weeknight, times when they would not
normally have been able to see their physicians. Also, 42 percent reported
that if they had not received ECPs directly from a pharmacist they would
have taken no action and would have waited to see if they were pregnant. An
additional 16 percent of women didn't know what they would have done if they
could not have gone straight to the pharmacy.

The Project's success has not gone unnoticed. Other states are looking to
replicate the program. Even other countries are using the Project in
Washington State as an example to help change public policy. In recent
discussions with Parliament, physicians' groups and Schering Health Care
Ltd., a European ECP manufacturer, the Birth Control Trust of the United
Kingdom presented the Washington State Project as a model approach to
increase ECP access and reduce unintended pregnancy. As a result, Schering
agreed to allow United Kingdom pharmacists to directly prescribe its ECP
product, thus breaking a deadlock that had existed since 1994 when the
company announced that it would withdraw its ECP product if it were
designated for over the counter sale.

Washington State residents can access the five pharmacists and other
health care providers nearest them that offer ECPs by calling the national
Emergency Contraception Hotline, 1-888-NOT-2-LATE, or by accessing the Website at http://opr.princeton.edu/ec/. Since the Project's launch in late February, the hotline has received 4,934 calls from Washington State, an average of 1,160 per month. Prior to the Project's launch, the hotline averaged 110 calls per month from the state.

ECPs are ordinary birth control
pills containing the hormones estrogen and progestin, taken in a higher dose
up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. ECPs are at least 75 percent effective
in preventing pregnancy. It is estimated that ECPs could prevent about half
of the three million unintended pregnancies reported in the United States
each year.

The Washington State Project, funded by the David and Lucile Packard
Foundation, is a collaboration among PATH, Washington State Pharmacists
Association, University of Washington Department of Pharmacy, Washington
State Board of Pharmacy, and Elgin DDB. PATH has also established a Project
Advisory Committee that includes legislators, physicians, and individuals
from various Seattle-area health, pharmacy, insurance, and legal
organizations.